Professor of Yale who moves to T of T due to the pressure of the “far right” Trump administration on universities

A professor of Yale University is leaving the United States and take a position at the University of Toronto (U di T) because of what he says is a “far -right regime” under President Donald Trump.

“The United States is about to an autocratic acquisition and is directed by a regime that I don’t think will want to leave power,” said Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy.

“It’s not just Donald Trump. It’s the car behind Donald Trump.”

Stanley, whose books include How fascism works: the politics of us and theirsHe said he was taking into consideration the idea of ​​joining the school for global affairs and public policies of U of T. For over a year. But he decided to move after Columbia University made broad changes to its policies last week under pressure from the United States government.

At the beginning of this month, the Trump administration canceled $ 400 million in the United States in research bags and other Columbia funding for the management of the University of Protests against the Israel military campaign in Gaza.

As a prerequisite for restoring these funds – together with billions more in future subsidies – federal officials asked the University to immediately issue nine separate reforms for its academic and security policies. In an answer on Friday, the interim president of the Katrina Armstrong University indicated that Columbia would implement almost everyone.

“The complete and total capitulation of Columbia, really giving up an autocratic regime, showed me that universities will not be together,” said Stanley.

In the meantime, U di T has told Stanley who intend to make Munk’s school “a world center of democracy in these emergency times,” he said.

“It was too obvious for me that I had to come.”

CBC Toronto contacted T of T for a comment.

Inverse brains are possible: education expert

The attacks of the Trump administration at Columbia University are partly unprecedented because it is so ambiguous, said Jonathan Zimmerman, professor of education at the University of Pennsylvania.

The public “(does not know) none of the details” behind the statement of the government according to which Columbia is tolerating anti -Semitism in the campus, said Zimmerman, who is the same Alumo of Columbia.

Among the political changes of the University, he said that the most worrying is the appointment of a senior provost to review several programs and departments that cover the Middle East, including the Center of Palestine Studies and the Institute for Israel and Jewish.

The appointment seemed to be a concession to the most controversial question of the Trump administration: that the University placed its department of Middle Eastern studies, southern Asia and African under “academic reception for a minimum of five years”.

“The idea of ​​the federal government that stretches the hand and uses this enormous tax lever to actually alter our academic practice, that is, unprecedented and which is deeply distressing,” said Zimmerman.

Zimmerman said he thought that Stanley will not only leave the United States historically, the refugees fleeing Nazism and communism arrived in the United States, where their academic contributions have changed entire American fields of study, he said.

“This is what people call brain leak and historically benefited (the United States),” he said. “I think there is a real danger at this moment that the exhaust will start going in the opposite direction.”

Some Canadian universities have listened to academics interested in America, said Gabriel Miller, president of the Canada Universities, which represents all public universities in the country.

“They are receiving calls from colleagues and counterparties in the United States, some of which are well known and accomplished researchers, who want to know that they will be able to continue their work in an environment in support of science,” he said.

U of T can take place of the American universities, says Prof

On March 10, the United States civil rights office sent 60 letters of post-secondary schools, notifying them that they are under investigation for discrimination and anti-Semitic harassment. Schools included Columbia and Yale.

Most of these institutions have not spoken in support of Columbia in fear of facing similar government attacks, said Zimmerman. After Columbia presented itself at Trump’s requests, however, he said that some post-secondary institutions are very worried.

“But my question is: where you were three weeks ago, when (Columbia) was threatened with this fine?” Zimmerman said. “What you were doing, almost all of you, was sitting on your ass.”

After Columbia announced its political changes, Stanley said she saw “the administrator after the administrator in universities, including unfortunately (Yale), who said that one of their main purposes was to lower and not be noticed”.

He said he loves Yale and would not consider the idea of ​​leaving in other circumstances. At this moment, he added, U of T is the only university to which he would consider to move.

“The University of Toronto is in the balance and ready to take the place of the American universities under attack, to be a world leader,” he said.